Guillaume Pujolle

Born 1893 in Saint-Gaudens – FRANCE. Died in 1971.

From his adolescence, Guillaume Pujolle worked with his father, a cabinetmaker and an indebted gambler, who died at the age of fifty-five. In 1924 he got married and moved to Metz, where he found work as a customs officer. His wife was terrified of him ; Pujolle was tyrannical, obsessed with order and pathologically jealous. In 1926, he tried to slit his throat with a knife. Hospitalized, in his delirium he wished for the death of his wife, thinking that she had been unfaithful to him. He also imagined that his wife had a daughter following him and spying on him. Released from the hospital, but in the grip of hallucinations, he threatened to kill his wife and commit suicide. At that point, he was committed permanently. His wife refused to abandon him and was allowed to work in the asylum as a nurse.
His first drawings can be dated around 1935, when he was forty-two. His inspiration came from magazines and the images he found there and cut out. He used a compass, a ruler and brushes made from his own hair. His drawings are primarily made with ink or pencil, but he also made use of pharmaceutical solutions, such as Iodine and Mercurochrome. His imaginary world is dominated by swirling motions, filled with menacing night birds and strange figures. Even though Pujolle’s works are not explicitly sexual, they emit a tactile and erotic sensation.